At age 56, dressed in head-to-toe pleather and looking odds-on to fall foul of the Challenge 25 policy self-scanning a bottle of her own-brand rosé in Sainsbury’s, Kylie Minogue has managed the impossible: to remain contemporary.
In the fickle music industry a decades-spanning career is a risky business: artists tend to cling too tightly to the past or doggedly, bitterly push their new projects. Not Kylie. Last year, her summer hit “Padam” propelled her to the top of the charts, making her queen of TikTok and earning her a new generation of fans. After all these years, since she broke out as a pop star in the late 80s following her role in the Australian soap opera Neighbours (the beginning of many noteworthy Aussie showbiz careers, including Margot Robbie’s), Kylie looks, and feels, as fresh as ever.
Yet last night, headlining BST Hyde Park, where plenty of those new fans mingled with old faithfuls (Minogue joked that several people in the front row, clad in “Padam red”, were probably not born when “Spinning Around” came out in the year 2000) another thing was clear. Minogue – effervescent in various shiny outfits, brimming with southern hemisphere sunshine, and with a voice as sugary sweet as ever – has been waiting her whole career to become a legacy act.
It was a show where the old and the new set each other off beautifully; neither would have the same impact without the other. She kicked off with “Tension”, her second biggest hit from 2023’s album of the same name – a pounding club banger with a naughty chorus (“Oh my god / Touch me right there”, screamed the 65,000 people crammed into Hyde Park, which, for American Express presents BST, is touchingly segregated by various “VIP” fences, making sure only those willing to spend a load of extra cash can see the stage).
It was a punchy, icy opener immediately relieved by the warmth of “Come into My World” (2001), whose vintage beat loosened up the crowd. High-camp theatrics onstage and the current vogue for all things Y2K meant that Kylie’s early bangers were kryptonite for this very 2024 audience, rampant with cowboy hats, sequins and cans of White Claw.
A few songs in, Kylie began to relax and enjoy herself – and, as she wheeled out hit after hit, the younger members of the audience were reminded that they were watching a legend. By the third costume change (from the red catsuit to a gold lady-liberty dress to a see-through mesh jumpsuit covered in silver cowboy-style tassels) she was on top of the world. When “Spinning Around” came, she checked if we all had space to dance – making sure we were having as much fun as she was.
And it was these huge vintage hits that yielded the strongest responses. “Padam”, when it arrived, was surprisingly anticlimactic; by contrast, Kylie’s 1987 debut single “The Loco-Motion” was a riot, and when she made a seemingly spontaneous bid for requests, laughing at her own recklessness, the front row screamed the names of golden oldies. Throughout, Kylie proved that legacy and relevance are two sides of the same coin.
All of this has a hint of irony. In the 90s and 00s, Kylie was rarely taken seriously as an artist – with her sexy outfits and smash singles, she was known, as she put it last night, as “that girl from the TV”, and never managed to cut through fully on her own merits. Now, with all those decades behind her and a growing army of fans – many LGBTQ – she is a legitimate, weighty act. It’s hugely to her credit that she still does not take herself seriously, that she moves with the times and still honours her past, that she remains laughing and bemused by it all.
Last night she told the crowd that artists are able to retain their drive “because of this feeling, because of all of you”. By the end of her compact 90-minute set, which closed with a three-song encore of the transcendent euro-pop hit “On a Night Like This”, her new single “My Oh My” (with guest appearances from its feature artists Bebe Rexha and Tove Lo) and the euphoric banger “Love at First Sight”, the boundaries between Kylie and her fans had blurred – we were all enveloped in what she called the “warm hug” of Hyde Park. Kylie’s always had the hits, the looks and the personality to carry her in the pop industry – but it’s that sense of community that, four decades later, makes her so special.